


separation of church and state

by sinkingsidewalks



Series: i want to be able to love you (without it hurting this much) [2]
Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Angst, F/M, I'm Sorry, really just pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 20:40:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14776880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinkingsidewalks/pseuds/sinkingsidewalks
Summary: He meets Julie two years after PyeongChang and a full eight weeks after he and Tessa have called it quits. Almost to the day.





	separation of church and state

**Author's Note:**

> I really didn't mean to write more in this universe but i woke up this morning to all of your reviews asking for more and this happened. I'm sorry?  
> This was supposed to be about Scott's twins. It's not.  
> This is a work of complete fiction.

He meets Julie two years after PyeongChang and a full eight weeks after he and Tessa have called it quits. Almost to the day. 

_“Scott?” she’d whispered as he’d tried to silently slip into their bedroom after a night out with some of the guys. It wasn’t that late but all the lights were off in the house so he’d figured she’d gotten an early night._

_He’d been wrong._

_Her voice cracked with tears, bubbling in her throat like water in a pot just beginning to boil. They were already overflowing her eyes though, running silently down her cheeks with the city light spilling across her profile, painting her in shadows. A Rembrandt, sitting on their bed in a worn navy nightgown, instead of her usual Degas._

_He’d known instantly what she had wanted to say. It was the curse or the blessing of more than twenty years together. He could never decide. His heart would have been broken if it hadn’t already been shattered._

_He toed off his shoes, shucked his jeans into the hamper while she cried silently. Her tears running into the smudge of her fingerprints as she wiped them away. He climbed onto the bed, pulled her into his arms, expecting her to crack into sobs but she didn’t._

_“I know, Tess.” He’d pressed his forehead into hers, eyes wet with his own tears, waiting for her stuttered breathing to even out against his. “It’s okay.”_

_Her hands dug into his arms, like after a gold medal win, like she could keep him there from sheer force of will. He smoothed her hair out of her eyes and cupped the back of her neck._

_“It’ll be okay.” Their noses brushed, but their lips didn’t._

_They’d sat up all night, scarcely moving as tears bled from one, then the other, then back. By the time the sun was creeping over Montreal her eyes had been dry. His alarm had gone off, telling him he needed to get to the rink, and they’d startled. He flicked it to silent, leaning out and breaking the bubble around them._

_“We’re gonna be okay, Tess.” He kissed her then, once, hard, and almost chaste, just enough to cement his addiction for life and left for Gadbois._

Two days later she’d gone and he’d pulled apart the crib.

 

Julie is a high school English teacher who is nothing like any of his high school English teachers. She’s outgoing, with a loud laugh and a wicked sense of humor. She played hockey for years before it shot out her knees and she’s always down to grab a drink. 

They hit it off instantly and match up perfectly. (Like a pair of socks, worn and worn through at different rates, instead of two valves beating the same heart.) But most importantly, she’s _nothing_ like Tessa.

She talks too much and she hates going to art galleries and she’s got warm brown eyes that he can’t read her soul in. She’s the first person he’s met since he followed Tessa back to London who doesn’t know too much and stare at him through a shield of pity. He throws himself into her to drown his grief instead of ending up at the bottom of another bottle.

They go out and stay in. She works all week, he ends up coaching for his aunt, and on the weekends they go to movies and dinner or hiking and camping. She doesn’t make him talk about it.

 

Three weeks into calling her his girlfriend, she settles onto the couch beside him, hardly glancing at the Leaf’s game replaying on the TV and asks, like all his girlfriends have always asked: “So, Tessa…?” She doesn’t make any assumptions and he’s glad. It feels like evidence he’s found the right woman.

He takes a breath and a mouthful of beer before setting the bottle down on her coffee table on the edge of an old _Globe and Mail_. He looks her dead in the eye when he says, “We couldn’t make it work.”

She hesitates, and he wonders what answer she was really expecting from him. “But you were together?”

He nods. “For four years.” Her eyes bug out just a little. Total transparency, he thinks to himself, that’s the only way he’ll ever be able to build anything new. “But we’re over, definitely.” He swallows hard. “Definitely done.”

“Okay.” She says, and thankfully doesn’t push, doesn’t ask _why_ or _how come_ or say any of the bullshit he’s become so used to hearing. _But you’re perfect for each other_. Maybe so, but God had other plans.

“So when do I get to meet her?” Julie asks and it’s a breath of fresh air in a smoked up kitchen. (Her kitchen, her burnt toast.)

He laughs softly to distract himself and shrugs. “I’m sure you will.”

She frowns, just a little, but he can recognize it in the corners of her eyes now when she’s unhappy with something he’s said. He tries to play it off, lightly. 

“It’s like Church and State,” he says, knowing which is his religion. “Tess is work.” It’s not a lie, he reminds himself, they do still have ongoing projects. Ones that they probably need to get back to. 

The line of Julie’s mouth flattens out but she nods. “Okay.”

 

He’s in the middle of meeting her parents when Tessa texts him:

_I want to do Stars on Ice_

He goes to the bathroom of the cozy Italian restaurant and shoots back. _Okay_ , he writes when he means, _anything for you._

 

He meets her two days later to talk about exhibition music. He sits on her couch, the white one in her white house which, even as they built their home in Montreal, the never talked about selling. 

She hands him a glass of water and perches next to him, her back too straight. She looks skinnier than the last time he saw her, almost a month ago. Not scrawny like she’s not eating but stronger, the angles of her have sharpened out, back from where they softened when she was pregnant. 

She still takes his fucking breath away. She’s all business, with her phone in her hand and her laptop on the table when he just wants to drown in the presence of her after so long apart. But she’s queuing up songs and he respects the foot and a half of space she’s put between them.

He listens through three and veto’s each one before he notices a trend. 

“Fuck, Tess.” He’s angry, all of a sudden, when he really listens. What is she trying to do to him? To them?

“What?” she asks innocuously, but she’s biting on the inside of her lip, worried.

“I-“ He shakes his head and takes her phone out of her hand, scrolling through the list of songs she’s collected. It’s exactly what he expected. They’re all super fucking sad. “We can’t skate to these.”

Her eyebrows furrow and her gaze hardens. “Why not?” She challenges.

“Because-“ he flounders, dropping her phone onto the couch between them, the familiar burn of these tears crawling up his throat. “We’re not doing an ex about-“ He cuts himself off with anther shake of his head. His birthday would have been coming up.

She takes his hand and it scours through his veins. “Not about, _for_.”

He relents. He always does with her. 

 

That evening he goes over to his parents’ house to talk to his mom about ice time and Alma sits him down at the old kitchen table and fixes him a mug of hot chocolate like he’s seven and just smashed his face onto the pavement playing street hockey.

“So you saw Tess today.” She says, knowing her son, after she’s agreed with him that they can have the rink after hours so long as they’re careful.

“Yeah.” He looks down into the powder blue mug and takes a sip of chocolate that makes him feel like home. 

“How’s she doing?” She’s being so gentle with him it almost makes it worse. 

“Okay, I guess. You know Tessa, she just, muscles through stuff.” Like this pain is as simple to quantify as her legs. “She’s excited about touring.” She had looked excited; it was mostly why he agreed. She’d had that focused look in her eyes as she was comparing their schedules and talking about what lifts they’re probably still strong enough to try.

“And you?”

He stares into the slight swirl of froth atop the chocolate. “You know.” He shrugs. “Life goes on.” It tears another piece off his heart for him to say it. 

 

Practice goes well. It’s kind of weird to be skating in Ilderton regularly. They haven’t since they were little kids and every wall is full of some achievement or commendation of theirs. They keep half the lights off, in their own little bubble, and it makes all twenty-three years easier to carry. 

They choreograph step by step, gliding across the ice, entwined in each other, then apart, then back again, talking a little but mostly just skating, as the song sings out over and over again. Most days he thinks she was right, it’s _for_ him. 

Then there are days when the music pours through the rink straight into his veins and they have to stop because he won’t spin her into a rotational lift when he can’t see from the tears clogging up his eyes. Tessa never says anything when it happens. She just holds onto his shoulders and lets him breath with her, sometimes wiping at her own eyes, sometimes not.

Julie gives him something of a funny look when he goes back to her house after practice with bloodshot eyes but she never says anything. She’s getting busy with the end of the school year approaching, surrounded it seems constantly, by a mountain of grading. He kisses her on the cheek and crawls into bed. 

 

Patch come out two weeks before tour to do finishing touches and he’s the first person to actually see the skate. They skate for him, under the dimmed lights of the Ilderton club and the rink goes hauntingly silent after the last notes of the music play out. Scott breathes into Tessa’s neck forcing back tears and she strokes one hand over his shoulder soothingly. Then they right themselves and turn towards their former coach. 

Patch, stoic, unreadable, Patch, has tears streaming down his cheeks. He claps slowly, the sound echoing in the empty space, as they skate towards the boards. 

He clears his throat. “C’est magnifique.”

Tessa launches into details, into questions that they haven’t had an audience to ask and her analysis on how technically sound they’ve been. Scott watches Patrice nod along, interjecting comments, and tries desperately not to touch her. Not to let his hand fall onto her lower back and guide her body into his the way he would have all those years ago when they were still striving for gold.

After, once they’ve run through and smoothed out and perfected, and Tessa leaves them both with a kiss on their cheeks, Patch claps his hand on Scott’s shoulder. 

“Have a drink with me.”

Scott nods, he knew this was coming ever since Tess told him Patch was going to fly out. He drives them back to Patrice’s hotel and orders a beer at the bar, waiting to listen. 

“The dance is very beautiful.” Patch says without making him wait long. “But it is also very painful.”

Scott nods along. There will be no doubts, at the end of every show, that tragedy struck them and broke them apart. 

“Marie and I have been worried. I know I cannot say that I know what you must be feeling, but we thought that you and Tessa were getting through it, together.” The word haunts him. 

“We were.” Then they weren’t. Then they couldn’t have a conversation that didn’t end in tears and he saw himself hurting her by standing in the same room. 

“And you both left Montreal so quickly, we thought maybe you just needed to return home.” He pauses, takes a drink, then dives back in. “But here, it's incredible, don't hear me wrong, but you are not skating together. Maybe at moments, but…”

“That’s the program.” Scott cuts in before Patch can go too far. “We’re on different paths.”

He nods solemnly and doesn’t push further. 

 

On the first day of tour he shows up to practice a little bit late. He’s racing through the arena, running to lace up his skates, panting mildly and frazzled by the time he gets to the ice. Most of the cast is milling around chatting casually or practicing independently. He breathes a sigh of relief. 

He hears Tessa laugh and looks over. She’s bent over, holding both hands of a little boy who’s wobbling along the ice, shuffling his feet in his shoes, pretending to skate. 

His heart seizes. For a moment he contemplates turning right around and walking all the way out of the arena, all the way back to Ilderton. But then she looks up at him, meets his gaze across the ice, and the smile on her face is genuine, still a little sad, but real nonetheless. 

He takes a deep breath and skates towards them. 

 

May 11th they thankfully do not have a show. He stays up half the night, watches the date on his phone click over and whispers to the glowing screen in the darkness, like candles on a cake. 

“Happy birthday, son.”

He opens Tessa’s contact at least three dozen times but he doesn’t call her even though she’s in the room next to his. 

He slips into restless sleep without noticing and at some point in his fevered dreams he hears a key slot into his hotel room door and feels Tessa’s warm body snuggling into his. After that, he sleeps a little easier. 

 

Julie flies out to Vancouver for the last night of tour once her classes are over and he doesn’t think about her watching when he cries into Tessa’s neck for what feels like the hundredth time in a month. It’s been a little more cathartic every night but this one, _this one_ , feels as he clutches at her like goodbye.

Later that night, after they’ve gone out for drinks with the cast that Tessa ducked out of with a pinched smile, Julie sits next to him on the bed where he’s icing his hip and asks what he’s been dreading for months. 

“Do you want to tell me what happened?”

The whole story spills out of him. Everything that happened in the lead up, and in PyeongChang, and their first two years of retirement, ending at the sharp knife of startling loss, of a life ended before it even had a chance to begin. _He’s a Dad_ , he whispers to her, _his son would have been a year old._

She hugs him and dries his tears and thanks him and tells him she loves him. 

He buys a ring the next day and starts planning how to give it to her.

 

Tour ends and the start of summer comes. Scott and Julie take a trip up the west coast and he doesn’t ask Tess what she’s doing. They don’t have another tour planned, he’s mostly sure they never will. 

They get back to London in July and he settles his time between the rink and her home that has at some point become his home and helping his dad out with projects. It’s quiet and for once in his life he enjoys that rather than feels unsettled in it. 

It’s all thrown up in the air when he gets back from the rink one day and Julie’s very obviously upset about something. She’s rambling in a way that he isn’t familiar with, going on about ‘unexpected’ and how this is ‘a lot for him’ and he thinks she’s trying to politely break up with him. He holds her hand and squeezes. 

“Take a breath,” he smiles and thinks he might be okay with it, even if he’s sure he loves her. “What’s going on?”

She does, then the bomb drops. “I’m pregnant.”

He has to sit down the head rush comes so fast. With it comes the clearest memory of Tessa saying the same words to him. It’s so detailed, so precise, he thinks for a moment that she may actually be in the room with him. Her shy smile hiding a grin, those elusive happy tears he loves so much crowding in behind her eyes. The word whispered with awe and, already, love.

Julie sits down next to him. She looks anxious. “I know we haven’t talked about this and this is probably different for you than it is for me, but.” She bites her lip and looks at the coffee table. She always does that when she’s nervous, she can’t quite look him in the eye. With a breath, she says definitively. “But I want this.” 

Scott gets up from the couch and goes into their bedroom. He takes the ring out from his sock drawer, where it’s tucked behind his Sochi medals, and races back to Julie. He wants this. He loves her.

She looks like she’s freaking out a bit, he belatedly thinks that maybe he should have said some kind of assurance before he ran off to get the ring. But she gasps when she realizes. 

“Julie Strauss.” He says kneeling in his sweatpants on a Tuesday in the summer. This too is so different from the last time. He relishes it. “Would you do me the absolute honor of becoming my wife?”

“Yes.” She whispers, crying a little, then laughing. “Of course.”

He grins, all the way up to his eyes and kisses her with a bit too much force as he slides the ring on. He doesn’t know if he’s actually happy.

 

A week later, Tessa shows up at the rink while he’s coaching and he realizes he has to tell her. 

“Hey.” He slides to a stop by the boards and scratches at his hair. It’s sheared short for the summer. 

“Hey.” She smiles back warmth at him.

“You want to come over and have coffee? I’ve only got another half hour here.” For once in his life he’s not sure how Tessa’s going to react to something so he figures it’s better to not have the conversation in a public place. Julie is in Toronto for a couple days visiting with her sister so he’s got the house to himself.

“Sure.” She picks up on that he has something to say, she’s Tessa, she must.

“Cool.” He skates back over to his class. She watches by the boards, waits until he’s done and cleared the kids from the rink, then follows him home in her car. 

She sits at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, looking around and he realizes that she’s never been here before. It feels too colossally strange for him to handle and have the conversation he needs to have, so he shoves it out of his mind.  
He passes her a mug, her mug, the pink one that they got in Paris with the Eiffel Tower sketched onto it with the chip at the bottom of the handle, that’s stays stowed away at the back of the cupboard. 

“So.” She says when he just stares at her, sitting in this strange kitchen. 

He takes a deep breath. He doesn’t know how to soften this blow so he just says it. 

“Julie’s pregnant.”

She sucks in a breath, tight in her throat. He watches a myriad of emotions flit over her face. Sadness. Grief. Anger. Nostalgia. Then she nods. “Okay.”

He nods back and waits for _something_. Tears, yelling, enthusiasm, _anything._

She smiles just a little bit, then gets up and hugs him not tightly enough. “I’m happy for you Scott.”

Then she leaves, him standing in the kitchen, the mug of coffee cooling on the countertop. He stays there until it gets dark. 

Tessa calls him the next Sunday. 

Six months later Amelia June and Etta Jane Moir come screaming into the world, healthy, two months early.

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah. let me know what you think or yell at me on tumblr where i'm also @sinkingsidewalks.  
> Also, music is not my thing so I really don't know what song they skate to. If you have thoughts I would love to hear about them!


End file.
